History

The first material traces attest to man’s existence on today Romania’s territory as far back as 2 million years (Bugiulesti, Valcea County). The originality of the cultural areas, related to the other pre-historical European cultures can be seen in the art of clay works (the painted pottery from the Cris region, from Turdas, Cucuteni; zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures such as the Thinker, discovered at Hamangia-Cernavoda). The clay tables from Tartaria (incised pictographic motives) testify tot he existence of a beginning of archaic writing the first in Europe about the year 4000 B.C., at the same time with the Sumerian writing.

The Geto-Dacians were the descendents of these ancient civilizations.

In the 1st century B.C., Dacian King Burebista unified all the Dacian tribes under his scepter, laying the foundations of the Kingdom of Dacia, a powerful kingdom having its political and religious center in Transylvania, at Sarmizegetusa. In the early 2nd century A.D., when the Dacian State was at a point of full flourishing under the ruling of King Decebal (87-106) the Roman imperial armies led by Emperor Trajan (98-117) conquered Dacia (106 A.D.), turned it into a Roman province and colonized it with Roman and Romanized people. Thus, the Geto-Dacians got Romanized in their turn. After the withdrawal of the Roman army and administration south of the Danube (271-275) following the attacks of migratory peoples, the Daco-Roman population continued to live on the very same lands where it had been born. For one millennium, it benefited by the neighborhood of the Roman Empire and then of the Eastern Roman Empire (that subsequently became the Byzantine Empire) that used to hold many bridgeheads north of the Danube.

The ethno-genesis process of the Romanian people was concluded in the 7th century. During the first millennium, waves of migratory peoples (Goths, Huns, Gepidae, Avars, Slavs, Bulgarians, Cumanians, Petchenegs, etc.) crossed the territory of Romania exerting a transitory domination that ended more often than not in their assimilation by the native population.

The Romanians were born Christians; along with the process of Romanization took place the process of Christianization both through the agency of Saint Andrew as well as through that of holy fathers that took refuge on or passed across Romanian lands. After the 1054 Great Schism of the Christian Church, they preserved the Orthodox rite. The state organization, attested to in writing, goes back to the 10th century; it is about the feudal states preceding the big Romanian feudal states. The pre-state bodies politic in Transylvania were ruled by dukes, princes or voivodes such as Gelu, Glad, Menumorut, Ahtum, or by jupani or voivodes in Moldavia, Wallachia or Dobrogea: Dimitrie, Gheorghe, Sestlav, Satza, Roman, a.o. (11th-12th centuries). In the 13th century, larger pre-state bodies politic are attested by documents under the leadership of voivodes Litovoi, Ioan, Farcas, and Seneslau. In the 13th century, the Hungarian feudal lords concluded the conquest of Transylvania started in the 10th century by the Hungarian tribes that put an end to their migration by settling in the Pannonian Plain. The voivodate of Transylvania remained vassal to the Hungarian Crown until 1526, when the Hungarian state disappeared as a state. In the 14th century, south of the Carpathians, Basarab I (1324-1352) unified the small bodies politic laying the foundations of the big Voivodate of Wallachia, and Bogdan I (1359-1365) founded the big Voivodate of Moldavia. Both these voivodes consolidated the independence of their states, defeating the armies of Hungary that were trying to enhance their domination thereupon.

In late 14th century, the threat of Ottoman Empire’s expansion emerged at the Danube. The three Romanian Principalities, Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia became for several centuries the bastion of the Christian world’s defense before the Islamic advancement. Princes such as Mircea the Old, Iancu of Hunedoara, Vlad the Impaler, Stephen the Great, Radu of Afumati, Petru Rares defeated in turn the armies of famous sultans like Bayazid I Ilderim (the Litghtning), Mohammed II (conquerer of Constantinople), and Suleiman the Magnificent. In the 14th century however, the Ottoman Empire imposed their suzerainty upon the three Romanian Principalities that enjoyed a large autonomy though.

The ruling prince of Wallachia, Michael the Brave (1593-1601) regained the independence of the country and unified the Romanians within one state, the first Romanian centralized state, including Wallachia, Transylvania, and Moldavia (1600-1601). The Union was however short-lived due to the interventions of the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Poland and of the Hapsburg Empire, worried by the proximity of a powerful Romanian state. Michael the Brave’s deed was made possible by the unity of kin and language of all the Romanians, by the national awareness that was spreading throughout the Romanian space. His feat set an example. The voivodes of the three Romanian Principalities that succeeded him constantly sought to reconstruct the ancient Kingdom of Dacia. Very close to accomplish that was Matei Basarab (1632-1654), the initiator and general commander of the anti-Ottoman League, formed of the Romanian Principalities, Poland and Russia. The one that ideologically established the doctrine of the Romanian people was Moldavia’s scholar ruling prince, Dimitrie Cantemir (1693, 1710-1711), member of the Berlin Academy. Under the influence of European enlightenment, in 1699, in Transylvania by then fallen under the suzerainty of the Hapsburg Empire, Bishop Inochentie Micu and the representatives of the Transylvanian School (Samuil Micu, Gheorghe Sincai, Petru Maior, Ioan Budai-Deleanu, a.o.) outlined them too the national ideology based on historical, linguistic and philosophical grounds.

The ideas of the French Revolution, entwined with native realities led in the Romanian Principalities to the emergence of a trend of novel political ideas. It was under these circumstances that the Revolution led by Tudor Vladimirescu broke out in 1821, having a social and national nature. Although repressed by the Ottoman armies, this uprising had significant political fallout: the Phanariot regime (established in 1711 in Moldavia, and in 1716 in Wallachia whereby ruling princes were appointed by the Porte particularly from among the Greeks of the Phanar) was abolished, and ruling princes were once more native Romanians. Modern governing and administration principles were introduced. The quick development of the market economy ran counter to the feudal privileges protected by the Ottoman suzerainty in the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia), and by the Hapsburg Crown in Transylvania, which led to the revolutionary outburst of 1848 in all the three Romanian Principalities. The 1848 Revolution that had a deep national character was first stifled in Moldavia and Wallachia (in 1848) and then in Transylvania (where the Romanians, under the leadership of Avram Iancu, resisted heroically until 1849) by the concerted interventions of the Tsarist, Ottoman and Hapsburg armies.

With the support of the big European Powers France and Prussia the union of Moldavia with Wallachia took place under the scepter of Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1859-1866), on January 24, 1859. He took steps for unifying the army and the administration, secularized the monasteries’ wealth, and promulgated several laws that had the same unifying role. The young state gained international recognition under the name of Romania. In 1866, Prince Cuza abdicated, in his place being elected Prince Carol, from the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen German royal family. He was Ruling Prince of the country since 1866 until 1881, when he was anointed as King of Romania. Carol I reigned until 1914. On May 9, 1877, the Romanian State proclaimed its independence, shattering the fetters of the Porte’s suzerainty; the independence was sanctioned in battle on the fronts of the Russian-Romanian-Turkish War of 1877-1878, and was granted international recognition at the Peace Congress of Berlin (1878). The newly obtained independence created favorable conditions for the country’s socio-economic and political development. A major role played in this respect the Constitution of 1866, one of the most modern in Europe at that time, and the laws that derived thereof.

Under the 1867 agreement between Budapest and Vienna, known as the "Austrian-Hungarian dualism," the whole Principality of Transylvania fell under Hungarian domination, its century-old autonomy being annulled. After the Union in1859 of the other two Romanian Principalities, and especially after Romania had become independent (1878), the Hungarian government intensified its policy of persecution and forced Magyarization of the majority Romanian population; the existence of the Romanians as nation was not acknowledged. In response, the Transylvanian Romanians set up the Romanian National Party (1881), whereby they conducted a sustained national struggle. In 1892, they forwarded to the Imperial Court of Vienna a Memorandum in which they described the suffering they had been going through and expressed their demands. The authors were tried and sentenced to jail for…treason.

Bukovina was torn off from the body of Romania in 1775 and fell under the ruling of the Hapsburg Empire following an understanding with the Ottoman Empire. Here too, the Romanian majority population was persecuted, and attempts were made to denationalize it.

Th eastern half of Moldavia had been annexed to Russia in 1812. In Bessarabia, as this Romanian province had been "baptized," Tsarist authorities conducted an intense policy of Russification, while encouraging the emigration of the Romanians. In exchange, a large number of Russians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, and Bulgarians were colonized here. No Romanian school was authorized. The Orthodox Church became as well an instrument of Russification, by the colonization of Russian priests, and by forbidding the liturgy in the Romanian language. It was not before 1905 that Romanian books started to be printed once more, written in the Cyrillic alphabet though.

Romania’s involvement in the First World War had one sole goal: the making of the national unity; Carol I’s successor, King Ferdinand I (1914-1927) was one of its advocates. The fall of the two multinational empires the Austrian-Hungarian and the Tsarist ones created the premises for the Romanians in Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania to choose in full freedom their destiny, and they decided for the union with Romania. On April 9, November 28, and December 1, 1918, Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania decided to unite to their mother-country. The post-war peace treaties (1919-1920) sanctioned the unitary Romanian State. In the new state, the democratic constitutional regime (the Constitution of 1923) created the premises for the general progress of the nation in all the sectors of the economic, social, political, and cultural life. Romania reached its economic acme in 1938. On an external plane, Romania (having as representative figure Nicolae Titulescu, foreign minister and twice chairman of the Society of Nations) conducted a policy of defending the world’s new post-war organization, and acted for thwarting the revanchist tendencies of revising peace treaties and frontiers first voiced out by Horthy Hungary and Nazi Germany, then by Soviet Russia and other states to the end of defending the territorial status quo, peace, and of building collective security.

However, in 1939, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was signed, whose Article 3 of the secret additional protocol made direct reference to the territorial disintegration of Romania. The big democratic powers (France and England) could no longer guarantee security to Romania. In the summer of 1940, Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany and Mussolini’s Italy forced Romania to cede the following territories: Bessarabia, Bukovina and Hertza to USSR; northern Transylvania to Hungary; the Quadrilateral (southern Dobrogea) to Bulgaria. That accounted for over one quarter of Romania’s territory and its majority Romanian population. In the eleven counties ceded to Hungary, the Horthy authorities subjected the Romanians to atrocities that materialized in 22,700 casualties, of which 920 individual and collective executions (at Ip, Trasnea, Nusfalau, Hida, Huedin, etc.); also in these counties, 160, 000 Jews were deported to the nazi death camps, 140,000 of whom disappeared without trace. The political regime in Romania changed and the country entered the war against the USSR (June 1941), on the side of Germany. The Romania armies fought on the Eastern Front until the summer of 1944; after that date, following the coup of August 23, they joined the allies and fought on the Western Front, contributing to the liberation of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria. The Paris Peace Treaty (1947) brought back northern Transylvania within the boundaries of Romania; Bessarabia, Bukovina, Hertza and the Quadrilateral remained outside them though. The Romanians trapped in those territories were subjected to brutal denationalization; the Soviets massacred, locked in camps or deported to Siberia and Central Asia hundreds of thousands of Romanians, in an attempt to reverse the demographic ratio. Moreover, the provisions of the Paris Peace Treaty sanctioned that Romania remain in the Soviet sphere of influence, as Stalin and Churchill had previously established, with Roosevelt’s accord. Once more, Romania fell victim to the game of interests of the big powers.

The communist regime was installed in Romania with the support of the Soviet occupant, after King Michael was forced to abdicate at the end of 1947. There followed the Sovietization of the country when repression started against those who represented the true democracy, against the intelligentsia, against the very Romanian spirituality. The opponents and potential opponents were annihilated by sentences to long years of hard imprisonment, to confinement into force labor camps, and by summary executions. Hundreds of thousands of persons perished. In parallel, action was taken for introducing the Soviet model in the economy, society, and culture. The communists proceeded to agriculture collectivization, to fake the national history, discarding national cultural and spiritual values, narrowing to the point of closing the access to the values of world culture and science. The danger of seeing Romania turned into a source of raw materials for the CMEA member states, and even dismembered (the Valev plan of 1964) made the communist leadership of Romania start abandoning the Soviet hegemony. The West saw communist Romania as Moscow’s rebel ally for having accomplished a significant opening towards Western states, and made Khrushchev withdraw his occupation troops from this country in 1958. Starting 1960, the industrialization of the country was started, against the will of the Soviets. During the Russian-Chinese conflict, Romania initiated an ostentatious action of de-Russification, particularly in culture. In 1967, diplomatic relations were re-established with West Germany, and in 1968, Romania condemned the intervention of the Warsaw Treaty troops in Czechoslovakia. The same year, this country became member of the International Monetary Fund and of the World Bank, and declared firmly against the arms race, especially against nuclear weapons.

The personality cult of Nicolae Ceausescu and of his wife, the regime of communist dictatorship led to a profound internal political crisis, generating deep discontent at all layers of society, to the brutal violation of the basic human rights, to an economic crisis of huge proportions. Several social revolts were recorded. A growing number of people, from various social environments, demanded radical changes in the political and economic structures. Between December 17-20, 1989, big anticommunist rallies took place in Timisoara that triggered the intervention of the repression forces. On December 21, 1989, powerful unrest shook Bucharest. Hundreds of thousands of citizens flooded the streets, occupied the main official buildings and chased the dictator. With him, the 45 years of communist regime in Romania were removed.

The National Salvation Front assumed power, announcing the dismantlement of the communist structures, the switch to the market economy, and free elections. In a relatively short period, the historical political parties (the National Peasant Party, the National Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party) resumed activity, and new parties were created. Administrative, parliamentary and presidential elections were held .(the last in 2004). The new Constitution of Romania was passed and promulgated (1991), including democratic provisions; in October 2003, following a referendum, the Constitution was amended in keeping with the loftiest European standards. The private economic sector recorded steady development, the big industrial enterprises were privatized by public offer, etc. As a result of the right to free expression and association, the media gained unprecedented impetus, so that Romania currently boasts the largest number of publications, private radio and TV stations in the East European countries (in proportion to its population). Romania is a member of the Council of Europe (1994) and of NATO (2004), and an EU member from January 1, 2007.